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They arrange food on the plate with visual flair, balancing colour, shape and height. Knowing we eat with our eyes first, some chefs sketch out, on paper, how each finished dish should look.

And then there’s Evaristo De Andrade.

De Andrade is the chef and co-owner of the new Pain Perdu Bistro, a low-key and enjoyable French restaurant that has fallen on Lawrence Park like rain in the desert.

De Andrade is also an accomplished painter whose abstract canvases sell for up to $12,000. His most recent show — 16 paintings at the Wynn LVNV design boutique in Las Vegas — will be followed by another in the fall.

His dual careers have taken him from his native France to Toronto to San Francisco and back again, working in both studios and kitchens.

De Andrade is 31 but looks 18, with a relentlessly positive attitude and remarkable stamina. After putting in 12-hour kitchen shifts six days a week, he paints at night and on Mondays, his day off. (His wife, a nurse, is clearly supportive.)

“The restaurant makes me happy but it’s good to have something to break the routine. You drink a coffee and you start to get inspired,” he says of his art.

He opened Pain Perdu Bistro on March 29 after buying the business, then called Steakfrites, from one former boss and partnering with another, Yannick Folgoas of Pain Perdu bakery on St. Clair Ave. W., where De Andrade once was pastry chef.

They’ve created a simple bistro with a strong Gallic vibe, unobtrusive service and decently marked-up wines.

De Andrade brings a painterly eye to Pain Perdu. It is a pleasant room, softly lit and oh-so-French with its cane chairs, long mirrors and black-and-white penny floor tiles. His surreal and naturalistic canvases hang everywhere, a conversation point for the well-dressed locals who fill the room nightly.

Pain Perdu has improved since its inception, when the kitchen struggled to find its footing and a shortage of waiters meant only basic order-taking and food delivery.

Now, Pain Perdu hums along from Folgoas’ bright French-language reception to the send-us-home candy dish of Jordan almonds at the door.

While his contemporaries downtown are blowing up the classics, De Andrade is the rare young chef who believes escargots in puff pastry belong on a Toronto menu. His brother Joe is sous chef; together they offer huge slabs of smooth-as-silk duck terrine ($12) and steak frites ($25) so gloriously rare that the strip loin bleeds onto the white plate when cut. Vegetables are particularly good here, perfectly steamed and glossed with butter and garlic; if that doesn’t sound exciting, ask to substitute the potato gratin layered with fluffy goat cheese, a spud lover’s dream.

Pain Perdu trots that old warhorse, chicken cordon bleu ($24), out of the stables in new colours. Instead of ham and cheese inside each crisply breaded tube of chicken breast, you’ll find far lighter spinach with sun-dried tomatoes and a flutter of melted mozzarella. But there’s no mistaking tournedos Rossini ($37) for health food, not when the usual rich ingredients — filet mignon, foie gras, truffles and port — come together in the right proportions.

“It sounds classic but it’s made by young people. You can do old-fashioned things with a modern touch,” De Andrade says.

That means stacking buttery smoked salmon ($15) and tangy cream cheese on wafers stamped from croissant dough supplied by the sister bakery. The wafers are inventive, as is the sharp surprise of ginger coating the accompanying greens.

There is still room for improvement. Salmon ($25) is overcooked, even if the accompanying crunchy-creamy polenta batons are spot-on. And a boldly modern appetizer of diced mangos and beets ($12) — a painterly dish with the orange and pink layers of a tropical sunset — belongs in the dessert section of the menu, given its lack of zip. It desperately needs more citrus, olive oil, chili, savoury herbs — anything to elevate it beyond fruit salad.

It’s back to the classics for desserts like profiteroles ($9), a messily shareable trio of crisp choux puffs stuffed with ice cream and coated in chocolate. Coupe colonel ($9) is a lemon sorbet so tartly sweet, it slaps your palate silly then hugs it tight.

One of De Andrade’s abstract works hangs in the entrance. Titled “California Dream,” it is painted in thousands of small squares, like a Klimt without gold leaf. Up close or at a distance, it warrants our gaze.

Clearly, De Andrade shouldn’t give up his night job — nor his day job, for that matter.

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